


Family

by SeiShonagon



Series: Support [11]
Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Caretaking, Episode: s01e10 Quid Pro Quo, Femdom, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Light BDSM, Multi, Self-Hatred, Trust, Trust Issues, Trust Kink, Wicca
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 18:03:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3578787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeiShonagon/pseuds/SeiShonagon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team deal with the fallout from the events of "Quid Pro Quo," in particular what it means for Chas to have lashed out physically at John as he did. They all have rather different views on the subject.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family

John looks contented when Zed walks into the kitchen the morning after her release from the hospital. When she and Chas had arrived the night before, John had been nowhere to be seen, off doing some thinking on his own, Chas had said. Whatever it was, it seems to have done him good.  
She is surprised to note that not only is John cooking a full English breakfast, he is apparently cooking for three. His shoulders are relaxed and he is even humming under his breath as he putters. She knew before this that John could cook, theoretically, but had never seen him do so when other options presented themselves.  
She is all the more shocked to see the bruise marring the left side of his face when he turns around with a pair of plates.  
“John, that looks awful – there’s no way that came from Felix Faust,” she declares.  
John shrugs lightly in response to the implied question. “Got in the way of an explosion I shouldn’t have. My own fault, really.”  
Chas walks in as John is speaking. It is the sound of Chas stopping too suddenly at John’s words as he enters the room, as if he’s encountered a barrier, that turns both their heads. He stands just inside the doorway, staring, pale with something Zed can’t immediately identify.  
She identifies it soon enough, though, as soon as John shrugs again. “Really, don’t worry about it, mate. No more than I deserved, standing between you and your family.”  
Zed feels sick when she realizes that this isn’t John attempting to misdirect her or brush off their concern. He truly isn’t worried over the fact that for some reason, while Zed was in the hospital, Chas apparently hit John hard enough to leave a mark twenty-four hours later.  
Chas seems more upset than John, in fact. Doesn’t change her intention to keep him away from the smaller man until she gets to the bottom of this.  
Zed has known for some time that John has a past he would prefer left alone, and that he has a hard time trusting people. To see this, from one of those few people, makes her blood turn to ice in a way she usually associates with thinking of her own family.  
Some instinct she didn’t know she possessed makes her step forward, her voice coming out nearly a snarl, when Chas reaches tentative fingers in John’s direction, as if to touch the mark on his face. “Stay away from him. You’ve done enough here.”  
Both men freeze, and Chas drops his hand. “I… I know.” He is still pale, staring at his own hands as if in shock.   
Now that Zed has started, she can’t seem to stop. She marches to stand between them, moving deliberately into Chas’ personal space until he will have to actually turn away if he wants to avoid looking at her. Her voice rises as she continues, “How could you, Chas? Would you treat me this way? Did you treat Renée this way? How can you think this is a way you can treat your partners? John deserves better than this from you!”  
“Hello, still standing right here,” John’s voice cuts across hers, still calm but carrying the beginnings of annoyance. When they both turn to him, he continues, “Isn’t it up to me to decide how important any of this actually is to me?”  
He’s standing with one eyebrow raised, hands on his hips, and he’s still fucking _smiling_ as if there’s something amusing about all this. Zed forces herself not to take out her anger on John. “Of course it is, John, but then it’s up to the people who love you to tell you when you’re being an idiot.”  
John sighs then, and runs a hand through his hair. “Last time I make you two breakfast. Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do, love, but seriously, this is probably the least important thing that’s happened recently. To me, or to any of us.”  
Zed thinks about that one for a moment, and runs a mental catalog. She herself nearly died. John… she thinks back on the news she had barely managed to give him before falling asleep at the hospital. She still doesn’t understand all the implications, but can imagine just from what she knows that something like that could have quite the impact. And Chas nearly lost his daughter.  
But this should be at least as important, to Chas if not to John. Which, she concedes, it almost looks like it is. He’s still silent, looking almost near tears, eyes tracking from Zed to John as if they’re debating his sentence.  
She supposes they are, in a sense.  
“Chas,” she says, to draw his attention to her. “I don’t know everything that happened, and I don’t care. John says he was between you and your family, and I understand that’s difficult. But the two of us, we’re your family too.”  
“That’s the problem,” Chas’ voice is strangled with emotion, and finally Zed understands. Chas _needs_ to be needed, needs to be a caretaker, on a very basic level, and whatever the situation was, he felt torn between two families, two obligations, with no right answer. She doesn’t know what to say – it doesn’t make anything right, Chas knows that and she knows that, but she doesn’t have a solution. And they’ll have to convince John at some point, but that’s a larger project, she realizes.  
“Well, mate,” John steps forward with all the true confidence and certainty she usually expects to see from him when performing magic, rather than the bravado and occasional vulnerability she has come to associate with the more personal side of his life. “For once, God help us, I’m the expert here. If there’s one thing I know about, it’s impossible decisions.”  
And for once, Zed knows has to leave the emotional side of things to John. She still has a ball of sick anger in her stomach, and is liable to jump between them if they so much as touch.  
“I’m going to go get the first aid kit,” she bursts out.  
John rolls his eyes and casts a last longing look at the now-cold breakfast, but gives in, muttering, “If it makes you feel better, love,” and turns to keep talking to Chas.  
Zed knows they’d probably do best with this moment just between the two of them, so she lets out her pent up energy running downstairs for the kit. She grabs the bag, pauses to add a few other items as a plan forms in her head, and runs back up the stairs.  
By the time she gets back to the kitchen, the two men are side by side, leaning against the table, and Chas is asking John a question in a low voice.  
“…How do you fix it?”  
John shakes his head and sucks a breath between his teeth. “I wish I had a better answer than this, mate, but a lot of the time, you don’t. You live with it. But one thing that sometimes helps, is when you have an opportunity to make the reverse decision.” At Chas’ silence, he holds out a hand toward Zed, never moving his eyes from Chas’ face. “Love, hand me the witch hazel and some cotton.” He presses the items into Chas’ hands, and whispers, “Take care of me.”  
Chas freezes for a moment, then slowly opens the bottle of witch hazel and, as Zed watches, slides into his role as caretaker, as family man, naturally as breathing. Zed’s own breath catches at the gentleness in Chas’ hands, as he dabs the liquid over the bruise on John’s face, as John’s eyes close under his ministrations.  
Now that John isn’t looking, she sees Chas surreptitiously wipe at his eyes.  
Time to make her move. She wishes she could pull this off with the kind of thoughtless confidence John would show, but the display would only look silly to people who know her.  
“So, um, if we’re all family,” she begins with a smile, deliberately putting a sway into her hips as she walks toward them to set the bag on the table, “maybe Chas should be taking care of both of us.”  
Both men catch her meaning immediately. Chas blushes, and John grins, changing his slouching posture against the table to an openly inviting one, tilting his head back slightly to smile up at the taller man. “Sounds like a plan,” he says.  
Zed takes a breath. This is the part she’s been tentative about. They’ve all been together more than once now, but she knows John prefers things more… adventurous. She thinks that might be a good opportunity, both to prove to Chas that John’s trust is real, and to prove that Chas can live up to it. But the time for being tentative is past, she thinks. This is the time for her to be assertive, and make things happen as she wants them, for her and for her boys. She reaches into the first aid bag and pulls out a pair of condoms and the exorcist’s restraints from downstairs, which she knows have frequently seen more recreational uses. John’s eyes certainly light up at the sight of them, though Chas looks more uncertain. Good, she thinks. He should, for the time being.  
“Maybe,” she says to Chas, “you can help me take care of him, too.”  
There’s a noticeable hesitation, then he nods, and they relocate to Chas’ bedroom, which has the largest bed.  
It is just as intoxicating as every other time she’s had sex with the two of them, but in a different way. If it had burned through her like strong whisky to have Chas pay focused attention to her body while John murmured appreciatively and added his own touches, watching Chas do the same to John under her guidance, reducing the exorcist to helpless need, is like a fine champagne, fizzing along her nerves. She is eventually drawn by their aching sweetness to join them in a more direct way, and she is touched that they allow her this, that they trust her enough to let her guide the work to rebuild the bonds between the three of them this way.  
After, when they’re all cleaned up and Chas has checked John’s wrists carefully, John stretches contentedly on the bed between them, relaxed enough that he falls asleep almost immediately. Zed sees Chas looking down at him tenderly, biting his lip once again.  
Now is the time for the rest of what she has to say, for all of them.  
“John’s been teaching me about the laws of magic,” she says to Chas, very softly so as not to wake John. “He’s taught me about the Threefold Law, that harm you do has a tendency to bounce back three times over. You know it?” When Chas nods, she meets his eyes dead on, then reaches out and brushes her fingers through Chas’ hair, using just a hint of sharp fingernails and just a hint of pull, and gives him a smile that she knows is mostly teeth. “You two are precious together most of the time. But, Chas Chandler, you harm him ever again, and so help me, I will make sure you feel it three times over.”  
Chas nods slowly, eyes still on hers. “Thank you,” he whispers.


End file.
